Der Freischutz
by Unknown Marauder
Summary: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor... The Huntress Rip van Winkle on her final mission; an insight into this mysterious and shortly mentioned character.


**A/N:**

**While most people are probably awaiting the completion or continuation of other woks, I choose instead to write and publish this. Everything else, while chapters have been or are being written for other stories, they are on hiatus. Sorry. Anyway, just purchased the first three volumes of Hellsing today and been reading fanfiction since about for this afternoon, thus inspiring this one-shot. It's about Rip van Winkle and, despite reading pairing-based stories the afternoon/evening, it has no real coupling. Well, maybe a little bit of RipxHanz if you look really, really hard. Oh, and despite the title, no lyrics from the opera have been used.**

**Discalimer: I do not own these characters, not the anime Hellsing. You have been disclaimer'd.**

XxXxXxXx

**Der Freischutz**

Tinker… tailor… soldier…

_Sailor._ The vampires smiled a toothy grin, clutching her musket as a mother would her child. In a sense, the antique gun was her child, her baby… and yet it was nothing more than a vessel for her real power. This power came in the form of a small, rounded musket shot, much like what the character who was her namesake would have hunted with. She growled… her parents had had a cruel sense of humor.

The Helicopter's engine revved up and its blades began to whir, slowly at first, but then faster, a black blur as they spun. Rip van Winkle looked from her perch out the open door and to the launch pad where, from the ground, the Captain, Hanz Gunsche, saluted his comrade. This made the huntress smile. _Good old Hanz_… When she returned with the Adler, she would most certainly share a celebratory drink with him.

But _only_ if he spoke.

She braced herself for the rising of the helicopter as it ascended from the pad and took off, soon moving out over the land, and to the water. Before them, the dark blue expanse stretched out almost endlessly. To cure the silence and throbbing sound of the copter blades, Rip began to hum.

It was _Der Freischutz_, written by Carl Maria von Weber. As she reminisced while humming, it occurred to her how, funnily enough, her own life paralleled the opera. The hunter, Kasper, was given magical bullets by Zamiel, just as her own sacred ammunition had been given to her by possibly the most powerful vampire on Earth.

This man was the vampire Alucard. Rip rolled her musket ball between her index and middle fingers and her thumb. She was Kasper… would Alucard become her Zameil? She scoffed silently. Vampire or no, her bullet punished all… without distinction. That included their maker.

On the horizon, where the Atlantic met the inky black heavens in seamless unison, the glowing lights of the English ship could be seen. Only now did Rip open her mouth and begin to sing softly her march, the warning which the ship's occupants would not here. In the back of her mind, Rip could almost sense the mood on the ship changing. First, they would be stunned at the oncoming aerial vessel. Next, fright, while their Ghoul captain turned on each man and ate their flesh, drank their blood… ripped every last incompetent human into bite-sized pieces. She couldn't help but chuckle. Not bite-sized, she reasoned. Fun-sized. Fun-sized human morsels that were easier to enjoy.

Once that mindless Ghoul of a captain had done what he needed to, the rest of the Millennium onslaught would awaken and begin to take full control of the ship, turning her into the newly formed Third Reich's flagship. Now _those_ subordinates she could control and work with. _They_ were the ones who knew how she worked. That newly turned insolent human who wanted nothing but power for himself would be of no use once she boarded. Rip smiled. She planned on killing him, anyway.

The co-pilot of the helicopter turned in his seat ever so slightly, nodding to the singing Huntress that her time had come. Without missing a word of her aria, Rip slipped the musket ball into her gun and cocked the hammer backwards, taking aim at the Adler's windows. Her bullet would go into the ship's bridge, and then sail through the skulls of still-alive crewmembers who would be of no use.

_Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor…_ Rip van Winkle smiled, and finished the last line of her song, closing one eye to take aim, her index finger wrapping around the trigger.

"My bullet punishes all without distinction!"


End file.
